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Branch Rickey Jimmy Breslin Viking/Penguin Lives: 148 pp., $19.95 "I had a problem for a writer," Jimmy Breslin tells us in the prologue to "Branch Rickey," his impressionistic portrait of baseball's great emancipator, the man responsible for bringing Jackie Robinson to the major leagues. "The rule I followed from my first day as a copyboy in the sports departments was that you couldn't write about a game unless you went to see it. … The trouble is, I spoke to Branch Rickey only once in my whole life." Here, in a nutshell, we see both the charm and the drawback of "Branch Rickey," a thin book padded in places with digressions and...

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Branch Rickey
Jimmy Breslin
Viking/Penguin Lives: 148 pp., $19.95
"I had a problem for a writer," Jimmy Breslin tells us in the prologue to "Branch Rickey," his impressionistic portrait of baseball's great emancipator, the man...

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND: Babe Ruth played a part in the institution of Major League Baseball's first trade deadline. As we get closer to the July 31 Major League Baseball trade deadline, thoughts generally turn to where players like Carlos Beltran ...

"42," the Jackie Robinson baseball movie starring Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, also features Hamish Linklater as Ralph Branca. Directed by Brian Helgeland, it will be released at the start of next year's baseball season.

It was Bill Veeck, a true maverick among the sport's moguls, who once declared that "[B]aseball must be a great game, because the owners haven't been able to kill it." Serious fans know they've given it a pretty good try over the years, with a...

To Brooklynites of a certain age, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley was a money-grubbing weasel who ripped the soul from their community when he announced he was moving the team to L.A. in 1957. Many Angelenos, however, view O'Malley as a pioneering saint...

Ah, the sounds of spring. The crack of the bat, the smack of the ball hitting the catcher's mitt, the ka-ching of cash registers totaling up sales of books on baseball out this season.
Just as ESPN seems to lean toward the American League East for...

One of the best sports moments I've experienced came at the 2010 All-Star Game's Fanfest. There in the case in front of me was the authentic retirement jersey of Jackie Robinson. Fans of guys named Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and ...

BASEBALL LEGEND: Grover Cleveland Alexander was drunk and/or asleep in the bullpen when he was called out to face Tony Lazzeri in the 7th inning of Game 7 of the 1926 World Series. STATUS: I'm Going With False. Modern baseball ...

BASEBALL LEGEND: A series of fortuitous events turned an 18-year-old bookkeeper who had never played organized baseball into a Hall of Famer. STATUS: True. With the fact that both Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, two of the best baseball players ...